Other View: Car improvements should retain safety

If you're a longtime motorist, you may have noticed a few changes in vehicles over the years.

That's putting it mildly. Today's passenger cars are a far cry from the vehicles of yesteryear.

One area of particular progress has been safety.

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But if you look around, you may have noticed one area the safety of cars has lost ground. That area would be right behind the car. Over the years, driver visibility has, on average, been disappearing.

It's no surprise, then, that the federal government estimates that backing vehicles kill nearly 230 Americans a year, including 110 children, according to a recent Associated Press article. Backing accidents also injure an estimated 17,000 persons each year.

Recognizing the emergence of a problem, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started studying the issue way back in 1993.

Finally, a federal bill requiring auto manufacturers to improve rear visibility was passed by Congress with strong bipartisan support and signed into law in 2008 by President George W. Bush.

Almost five years later, however, the standards have yet to be required.

The U.S. Department of Transportation had a Feb. 28, 2011, deadline to issue new guidelines for car manufacturers, but the deadline has been extended three times by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Guess why? Yes, manufacturers are fighting the requirement and have asked to push back the implementation date -- originally September 2014 -- by two years.

That's because the proposed rules would require rearview cameras and display screens as standard equipment, adding as much as $88 to the cost of nine out of 10 new vehicles and up to $203 to the rest.

So the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers instead wants to go with special mirrors that are cheaper. The manufacturers are concerned about adding to the cost of new vehicles, now averaging about $25,000.

Cost is, of course, a valid concern.

On balance, however, one has to ask these questions: How much are the lives of 230 Americans a year worth? How much is the life of just one American worth if, for instance, it's your child? Whom would you volunteer to be among the 460 Americans who can be expected to die if the further delay requested by the industry is granted after 21 years of inaction?

Finally, who among us isn't willing to pay an additional three-tenths of 1 percent to save hundreds of lives over the next decade? Who isn't willing, that is, other than auto manufacturers who were bailed out of their own certain death by U.S. taxpayers?